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Transparency

Knowing “what the government is up to” is often the first step in ensuring that the government respects the civil liberties of its citizens. Transparency is especially important given the government’s increasingly secretive use of new technologies for law enforcement and national security purposes. From cell phone location tracking, the use of surveillance drones, secret interpretations of electronic surveillance law, and the expanding use of biometrics, EFF wants to hold the government accountable and uphold your digital rights.

To that aim, EFF’s Transparency Project is dedicated to using federal and state freedom of information laws, the courtroom, and our megaphone to shine light on government activities.

One of the major tools we use is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a federal law that gives people the right to request information kept by federal government agencies. Our team of FOIA lawyers also submit requests on a variety of digital civil liberties issues and often take cases to court when we believe the government is unduly withholding information. But anyone can make a request under FOIA, and you can go here to learn how you can submit your own.

While emerging technologies give the government new tools that threaten citizen civil liberties, technology also has the potential to create a more democratic relationship between public institutions and the citizens they serve. Today, a broad range of new tools are allowing the public to more closely examine government and corporate entities and to hold them accountable for deception, censorship, and corruption. In addition to using freedom of information laws to shed light on government actions, EFF also wants to highlight technologies that help the transparency process —whether it’s making it easier to file and track FOIA requests, websites dedicated to whistleblowing, or open government initiatives that can improve access to information.

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EFF sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the 10th anniversary of the signing of the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2011 for answers about “secret interpretations” of a controversial section of the law. In June 2013, a leaked FISA court order publicly revealed that “secret interpretation”: the government was using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect the phone records of virtually every person in the United States.

EFF filed suit against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), receiving thousands of pages about the certifications and authorizations the agency has issued for the operation of unmanned aircrafts, also known as drones. The Federal Aviation Authority, part of the DOT, is the sole entity within the federal government responsible for authorizing domestic drone flights, providing a certification or authorization for any drone flying over 400 feet. Prior to our suit, there was no information available to the public about who specifically had obtained these authorizations or for what purposes. Through our lawsuit, we received specific and detailed information on the drone licensing process that was never before released. This prompted significant public awareness and discussion about the privacy and surveillance issues with drones. EFF partnered with MuckRock, an open government organization that helps individuals send requests for public records, to crowd-source FOIA requests to local law enforcement agencies about their use of unmanned aircrafts.

EFF filed suit against three agencies of the Department of Justice (DOJ) demanding records about problems or limitations that hamper electronic surveillance and potentially justify or undermine the Administration's new calls for expanded surveillance powers.

EFF filed suit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a half-dozen other federal agencies involved in intelligence gathering, demanding the immediate release of reports about potential misconduct. These agencies are required to submit periodic reports of "any intelligence activities of their organizations that they have reason to believe may be unlawful or contrary to Executive order or Presidential directive" to the Intelligence Oversight Board. The board, consisting of private citizens with security clearances, is tasked with reviewing those reports, summarizing them, and forwarding to the president those that it believes describe violations of the law. Through EFF's lawsuit, we obtained and published publicly thousands of pages of documents from these misconduct reports. Contrary to official promises about embracing transparency, our suit unveiled not only extensive, illegal misuse of intelligence gathering and surveillance powers, but also a practice of routinely covering up such abuses.